MSI Press Blog

  For most of recorded history, Christianity has been the world’s largest religious tradition. Islam has been the second. That hierarchy has shaped geopolitics, culture, identity, and even the emotional vocabulary of the modern world. But according to long‑range demographic projections from the Pew Research Center, that era is ending. By 2050, if current trends continue, Muslims will nearly equal Christians in number worldwide . This is not a story about conversion waves or ideological triumph. It’s a story about fertility rates, age structures, and geography — the quiet engines of demographic change. Muslim-majority populations are, on average, younger and have more children. Christian populations, especially in Europe and North America, are older and shrinking. Meanwhile, Christianity’s center of gravity is shifting southward, with sub‑Saharan Africa becoming home to a rapidly growing share of the world’s Christians. Islam, too, is expanding in Africa and maintaining strong grow...

  A Multifaith Reflection on Suffering and the Sacred It’s one of the oldest and most unsettling questions in human history: If God is good, why does evil persist? Why do the innocent suffer, the unjust thrive, and violence echo through generations? Every major religious tradition wrestles with this tension—not to solve it neatly, but to live with it faithfully. Here’s how some of them approach the paradox: ✝️ Christianity: Free Will and Redemptive Suffering Christian theology often frames evil as the consequence of human free will. God, in love, allows choice—even when that choice leads to harm. Suffering, while painful, can also be redemptive. The crucifixion of Christ is seen not as divine failure, but as a profound act of solidarity with human pain. Evil exists, but grace persists. 🕊️ Islam: Divine Wisdom Beyond Human Understanding In Islam, everything happens by the will of Allah, but not all is meant to be understood. Evil and suffering are seen as tests—opportunities for pa...

Introduction  Various scholarly explanations have been set forth regarding why Islamic reform, a movement preoccupied with reviving Islamic civilization and resisting Western colonialism through the creation of a Muslim civil society, was superseded, in the mid-twentieth century, by Islamic fundamentalism, a movement preoccupied with creating an ‘Islamic state’ by violence if necessary Such explanations can be classified into two major categories: ‘traditional legacy’, and ‘external dynamics’.  The ‘traditional legacy’ category includes works that explain Islamic fundamentalism as a product of the traditional legacy of Islam, which makes no separation between religion and state and which promotes political violence through the emphasis it places on jihad or morally ordained struggle/resistance.Muslim religious scholars, however, strongly discouraged violent political descent. Regarding the confrontation of government authority, Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) wrote: “What is well know...

  Today's book excerpt comes from  An Afternoon's Dictation  by  Steven Greenebaum . PART ONE: THE CALL TO INTERFAITH CHAPTER ONE   In 1999, I’d reached the end of my tether. Over the years, there had been one crushing event after another. The woman I’d intended to spend my life with, who had intended to spend her life with me, had been killed in a senseless traffic accident. My mother, who had lived her life fettered by the chains of patriarchy, had at last broken free and blossomed, recognizing her own self-worth, only to be struck down by cancer after just a few short years of truly enjoying life. And then my father, with whom I’d had major disagreements but whom I loved and honored as my father, had died a humiliating death, plagued by dementia. These were just the tips of the iceberg. I was one angry human. In the privacy of my house, I kept saying, sometimes out loud and sometimes in my mind, “God, you’re there? Really? I want five minutes, and I want ...